Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government provides funding support to a range of urban and community regeneration projects across Scotland and we receive regular reports on them. However, and as you will know, there are many regeneration projects that do not require Scottish Government funding. We are aware of many of those through ongoing discussions with local authorities, other funders, intermediary organisations and communities.

The £350m Community Fund, of which £100m has been committed to the third sector, has been delivered rapidly, ahead of other parts of the UK, and to a much greater scale.

Programme for Government announced a Third Sector and Communities Recovery fund, which will support organisations to transition to sustainable income streams. Details will be announced in the next few weeks.

The Scottish Government has committed to seek to extend three-year rolling funding where possible and we are actively progressing this work. To provide early certainty, our practice is wherever possible to confirm future grant offers before the preceding funding period ends. While local support will normally be responsibility of the Local Authority, we hope to lead by example and would encourage all funders to consider longer term funding options.

The Scottish Government introduced a range of measures to support businesses (including eligible childcare providers) through the closure period.

Nurseries were able to apply for support through the Pivotal Enterprise Resilience Fund. Applications to the Fund were assessed against the published criteria with the Enterprise Agency’s trained assessors applying a consistent appraisal methodology to each application.

Some nurseries received support through the Small Business Support Grant (part of the £1 billion Business Support Fund). The Business Support Grant scheme, which closed for new applications on 10 July, made £10,000 grants available to non-domestic ratepayers with properties in receipt of:

• Small Business Bonus Scheme relief (SBBS) or Rural Relief. Rate payers were eligible for SBBS if they have an individual property with a rateable value of up to £18,000, and a cumulative rateable value of up to £35,000.
• Nursery Relief , Disabled Relief, Business Growth Accelerator, discretionary Sports Relief, Enterprise Areas Relief, Fresh Start Relief, or Charitable Rate Relief but eligible for SBBS.

Third sector providers may also be able to access support through the Scottish Government’s Third Sector Resilience Fund.

In addition, to support childcare providers the Scottish Government and Local Authorities guaranteed that payments for the statutory early learning and childcare entitlement continued for the duration of closures, regardless of whether providers were open or closed.

On 16 July we announced that the Scottish Government will make funding of £11.2 million available, through a Transitional Support Fund for childcare providers.

The Transitional Support Fund will help childcare providers in the private, voluntary and not for profit sectors, including out-of-school care providers, meet the extra costs incurred to comply with public health guidance in response to COVID-19.

The Transitional Support Fund will open for applications on 3 September 2020.

When the extent of the pandemic became clear we took the decision to suspend the universal statutory duty on local authorities to provide 1140 hours of Early Learning and Childcare (ELC) which had been due to commence in August 2020. This was an extremely difficult decision, but one the Scottish Government considered necessary due to the significant impact that the pandemic has had on the ability for capital infrastructure projects to be completed and for recruitment to take place. The Scottish Government remains fully committed to our plan to nearly double funded ELC hours.

Local authorities continue to be funded in full to deliver the 1140 expansion programme and are continuing to progress their 1140 expansion plans where resources allow. It is recognised that local authorities and PVI providers have already expanded their ELC capacity in anticipation of the 1140 expansion, to varying degrees, and that application of the guidance on safe reopening may affect the extent to which that capacity can be fully utilised at this time. It is critical to the future roll out of 1140 hours that this expanded capacity is protected and maintained. We have encouraged local authorities to work in partnership with funded providers to commission provision beyond the 600 hours, and many authorities are doing so.

The Scottish Government committed to maintaining existing funding streams to funded providers throughout lockdown to give added assurance that any financial pressure resulting from the loss of private income would not be compounded with the withdrawal of funded hours payments. There was a clear understanding within Government that most funded providers would have forecast their yearly finances based on the assumption that these payments would continue, clearly not knowing what lay ahead once we were in the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This commitment, has supported providers and protected capacity in the sector while closures where necessary. The continued payments that local authorities have provided to their funded providers through this period, while settings remained closed, has helped ensure financial sustainability in the sector. From 10 August where settings have chosen to remain closed, local authorities are no longer required to make funded hour payments to these ELC settings.

In contrast, The Transitional Support Fund, was developed in reaction to the hard hitting financial effects and designed to help day-care of childcare providers in the private, voluntary and not-for profit sectors, including out-of-school care providers, meet the extra costs incurred to comply with public health guidance in response to COVID-19. The COVID-19 operating guidance has significant financial implications (including physical adaptations and additional staffing) for settings. As such, the Transitional Support Fund was developed to offer support to help mitigate these costs.

The amount awarded to each setting is based on registered capacity, allowing the costs of adaptations required as capacity increases to be met. Costs are demonstrably higher for a setting registered for 100 children as opposed to 10 children. Adaptation costs are not fixed and vary with registered capacity and premises size.

The eligibility criteria and payments structure for the Transitional Support Fund make no distinction between those providers who deliver funded ELC hours and those who do not. Scottish Government recognises that costs of adaptation are not affected by funded status.

More broadly, The Scottish Government and UK Government introduced a range of measures to support businesses through the closure period, including the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, the Self-employment Income Support Scheme, and the Bounce Back Loan Scheme, more details can be found here - https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-support-to-childcare-sector/pages/private-and-third-sector-providers-financial-support/.

The Covid-19 Pandemic has put us all in an unprecedented, challenging situation, and the Scottish Government recognises that over these past few months that every aspect of our national life has been affected by this crisis. Following the closure of schools and early learning and childcare settings on 20 March 2020, the Scottish Government and local authorities worked together to ensure that key workers with no other option for childcare could request to access critical childcare to allow them to continue to play their vital role in the national response to Covid-19. Vulnerable children were also able to access critical childcare during these periods of closure, including children with complex additional support needs and those with care experience.

In recognition of the vital roles that key workers were undertaking, often putting their own and their families health in danger, Ministers took the decision that where local authorities made a critical childcare offer this would be free at the point of access during the emergency response period. Local authorities delivered this, coordinating local provision, where possible, with the private and third sector, including childminders.

To support local authorities to deliver this Ministers confirmed that funding previously ring fenced to deliver the 1140 hours expansion along with other ring fenced funding streams including the Pupil Equity Fund, Attainment Challenge funding and Regional Improvement Collaborative funding, could be used flexibly to meet the costs associated with supporting children and families during the pandemic, including critical childcare.

I have commissioned Public Health Scotland to work with Health Boards to produce validated analysis on the number of patients tested prior to discharge and the outcome and date of that test. That includes examining how many were assessed as being discharged when they were considered to be infectious, and the rationales that were in place for such a discharge, for example in the case of palliative care concerns.

Public Health Scotland are working to provide this data by the end of September.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-31286 on 28 August 2020. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

According to Edinburgh Airport, pre-COVID 19, they directly employed 750 people and over 5,000 people worked on their site. In 2016 Edinburgh Airport commissioned their own analysis of supply chain impacts, which estimated 2,200 to 3,300 jobs were supported within the direct supply chain of the airport. The report of the analysis commissioned by Edinburgh airport can be found at:

https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/edinburghairport/files/2016/04/20160414
_Economic_Impact_of_Edinburgh_Airport.pdf

The global downturn in aviation caused by COVID-19 has had a significant impact on airports around the world, including here in Scotland. As passenger numbers are not expected to return to pre-COVID for up to 5 years, airports, airlines and various ancillary companies are having to re-size to meet that lower demand.

Where we can, we have provided support to the Scottish aviation sector. Airports have been granted 100% non-domestic rates relief for a year and we have written to the UK Government urging them to extend the Job Retention Scheme for the aviation industry. The Scottish Government is also working with airports on route recovery, as part of our well established partnership involving Transport Scotland, VisitScotland and Scottish Development International, to help rebuild connectivity for business and tourism and win back routes and employment opportunities.